and scowled, thinking it over, probably contemplating what he could and couldn’t say. Then he leaned back and shook his head. “Not likely. Ed and Tiffany Vargas don’t have—” Stanton floated us the grin again, “—how should I put this? Let’s just say they don’t have a normal mother-son relationship.”
Jendrek laughed and said, “I picked up on that. Hell, they look about the same age.”
“I actually think the son is older than the mother.” Stanton rubbed his chin and said, “Let me give you a little background. Don Vargas first came to me about twelve or thirteen years ago. I was a brand new partner and I’d gotten a reputation doing First Amendment work for a group of adult bookstore owners down in Long Beach. They were challenging some rezoning. The city was trying to put them out of business. Normally we don’t do cases fighting with cities, but it was Long Beach and it was a sexy free speech thing, so I took it and we won.”
Stanton crossed his legs and took his time telling the story. “This was sometime in the mid-90s, 1995, ‘96, something like that. Anyway, Vargas came in not long after that case and told me he was trying to put together this project selling pornography over the Internet. I know it’s hard to imagine these days, but remember back then most people had never heard of the Internet. I didn’t know anything about Vargas, and the porn industry isn’t something a firm like this likes to do business with, but I was fascinated by the idea. I mean, from a free speech standpoint, there are all kinds of issues with selling pornography over the Internet. It was cutting edge stuff at the time.
“All I knew about Vargas back then was that he’d made his start back in the 70s. You know, making actual porno movies on film. But the guy was a real visionary. He saw the potential for home video technology to completely change the industry and he was one of the first guys to really start doing video. He made a ton of dough in the early 80s and then kind of limped along from there once business leveled off. Then, when the Internet thing came, he was right at the forefront of that as well.
“But what’s important for you two to understand, is that a lot of the Internet stuff was driven by Ed Vargas. He was all into video games and shit like that. Computer stuff, right? He was a sophomore or something at UCLA and he’s the one who turned his dad onto the Internet thing. Don Vargas took one look at that, saw what its potential was, and he started pouring money into it. Vargas was one of the first guys, hell, maybe the first guy, to do things like put cameras in a sorority and broadcast it over the Internet.
“When I first met him, he had a warehouse out in the Valley that he was building these little sets in. You know, a shower room, a gym room, a bedroom, a hot tub room, and he was going to put women in them and have Internet peep shows. That’s what he first came to talk to me about. It was really brilliant. He was way ahead of his time. It was years before the technology really caught up with his ideas and made it possible for him to do everything he really wanted to do.”
Stanton laughed and rolled his chair over to a file drawer along the wall. He opened it up and flipped through some files as he spoke. “The funny thing is, you’d never have guessed the guy was an innovator by looking at him.” He pulled a booklet from a file, got up, and handed it to me. It was a press release from a pornography conference in Las Vegas.
“There’s a picture of him on page three,” Stanton said as he sat down again. “I mean, he was a sleazy looking guy. Gold chains, big rings, the whole deal.”
I opened the booklet and saw a Rodney Dangerfield looking guy grinning out from the page. The caption below the picture read: Don Vargas, a thirty-year veteran of the Adult Entertainment Industry, says, “Everyone loves to fuck, but only a lucky few make money at it.” I smiled and handed it to Jendrek.
Stanton said, “Ridiculous right? But that was how he was. And let me tell you, he made a lot of money. He has about twenty companies doing everything from making movies, to making sex toys, to running an Internet empire. It’s brilliant. He cross-sells everything. It’s unbelievable really.”
Jendrek said, “So all these businesses, who’s going to run them now? If he was the brilliant guy behind everything, is there a successor? A board of directors?”
Stanton shook his head. “No. See, that’s the problem. Vargas was a wheeler-dealer kind of guy. He had his hand in everything and ran it all fast and loose. No boards of directors, no shareholder meetings, none of that shit. He owned and controlled everything. It was all Vargas all the time. It was a very mom and pop, homegrown kind of thing. No formalities. No strategic plans. Nothing like that. Hell, Vargas didn’t even have a will.”
I said, “You’re kidding me? What’s this guy’s estate worth?”
“It’s hard to say. Vargas might have been worth a hundred million.”
“Dollars?” Jendrek almost gasped.
Stanton nodded very seriously. “Yeah. I don’t know the exact number, but what I do know is that California is a community property state, which means whatever it’s worth, it all goes to his wife.”
“So Ed Vargas is out in the cold?” Jendrek chuckled at the cruelty of it.
“Well, I don’t know about that. I mean, someone’s got to run these companies and Ed is the logical choice. But with Tiffany owning everything, Ed’s just another employee. They’ve never gotten along before, I doubt this is going to improve their relationship.”
Jendrek and I glanced at each other. I was thinking about Ed Vargas’s comment about what had been done to him and it suddenly made a lot more sense. I could see Jendrek was thinking the same thing.
Stanton cleared his throat again. “This is made even touchier by the fact that Ed has really been the one running the Internet companies. And lately, he’d been pressuring his dad to go ahead and transfer ownership of those companies to him. Don was ready to do it. We were drafting the documents this week. Don’s plan was to transfer ownership to his son before the end of the year.”
Stanton let his words hang in the air for a few long seconds. Jendrek leaned forward and set the press release on the edge of Stanton’s desk and said, “So Vargas the younger has lost out on a sizeable chunk of dough?”
Stanton said, “That’s an understatement. With the explosion of the web, the Internet business has grown exponentially over the last ten years. Everything else has been flat, or has actually declined in value. The Internet business is now far and away the largest revenue generator in the Vargas empire. Tiffany Vargas could always go ahead and complete the transfer to Ed, but something tells me she won’t.”
Jendrek asked, “Was Ed aware that his father was going to transfer ownership?”
“Oh yeah, definitely. He’d been pressuring his dad to do it for a long time. They were both in here just last week looking over some documents.”
“So Tiffany Vargas is the beneficiary of the cop’s stupidity.”
“I’d say that’s about right.” Stanton smiled.
On the way out we stood around in the lobby waiting for the elevator. I could tell Jendrek was thinking things through when a soft ding signaled that our ride was there. We stepped into the elevator and I could see his eyes focus on the bright colored painting hanging on the opposite side of the elevator bank.
“Is that a real Picasso?” he asked, as the doors closed.
I said, “Of course. Only the best around here.”
Copyright © 2011 by Fingers Murphy. All rights reserved.
Published by Fingers Murphy
Published simultaneously throughout the world.
No part of this publication may be reproduced except as permitted under Section 107 or 108 of the 1976 United States Copyright Act, without the prior written permission of the Publisher. Requests to the Publisher for permission should be addressed to: [email protected].
This is a work of fiction. While certain characters, locations, or situations depicted herein may resemble or be based upon people, places, or things in the real world, their use herein is entirely fictional and any resemblance to actual persons, places, or things, living or dead, is either coincidental or used solely create verisimilitude. Basically, if you think this book is about you, someone you know, or someone you have heard of, you’re a moron.
Table of Contents
Dedication
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
Epilogue
Preview: THE FLAMING MOTEL
Copyright
Table of Contents
Dedication
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
Epilogue
Preview: THE FLAMING MOTEL
Copyright
Table of Contents
Dedication
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
Epilogue
Preview: THE FLAMING MOTEL
Copyright